


Consigned To A Yesterday

by NacreousGore



Series: TWL Top Dogs Week [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Beacon Hills (Teen Wolf), Bed-Wetting, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Injury, Post-Nogitsune, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Sharing a Bed, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:47:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NacreousGore/pseuds/NacreousGore
Summary: Scott and Stiles and varying ways of healing over.
Relationships: Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski
Series: TWL Top Dogs Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198433
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	Consigned To A Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the Caretaker. exploring the nature of sciles' friendship.

“Fuck, Scott, doesn’t that hurt?” Stiles says. His eyes are latched onto the bare line of Scott’s torso, stretched tight as he twists in the mirror to see it himself. The dagger had cut him deep from ribcage to hipbone. An attempted gutting that had fallen diagonally as Scott had leapt back and away. The gouged out trench of flesh has pulled itself together at the outer edges, but the core of the slash is still raw and vibrant. 

“It’ll heal,” Scott says. It’s dismissive, assuring. It purposely doesn’t answer the question and they both know it. 

It’s already healing, albeit slowly thanks to the poison that had coated the serrated blade, and the skin around the main wound seems to glisten. The cells inside trying valiantly to reform and come together, and the colour of it shifts beneath the surface. Bright splotches of red dispersing and flowing into darker spots of purple. It tapers blue around the edges, blackish, spotted dappled greens. 

The threat had crept up like so many tended to in Beacon Hills. Understated, silently and violently. 

A line was paved through the woods, an arrow drawn on the soil with the bodies of dead cats, and there was a shadow stitched inside the lining of the brightest of the sunlit days. 

A creeping feeling, ancient and toiling, an aura that Derek could feel prickling his skin, a ball of lead that Scott carried in his stomach. For Lydia it was an edge - a needle-sharp snag inside her mind, pressure at the back of her throat. Liam and Theo hadn’t been sleeping, though only Liam admitted to it. Both were cagey with restless pacing. Malia took their energy, gave it legs and vanished for long hours, only to return lean and panting, distant and violent. Stiles carved circles around them all with the nervous darting of his eyes. 

The feelings, the narrow path of small corpses came to a head in an innocuous section of the deep woods. A tree was split in half as if from a great lighting strike. The centre of it was hollowed out, filled with blood like the wet marrow core of a bone, and everything living that surrounded the roots fell dead, twisted and black. 

Ritual. 

The return of some earth-old demon - some damned king, bound to death and turmoil - and they found his name in weathered pages of a book scoured with symbols long forgotten. 

Together the pack had broken the seal, cracked the code and found the burial site. What the theories and cryptic notes within the bestiary had failed to mention were the twin priests who guarded the ossuary - and their weapons carved from bone and runes, designed for carving supernatural bodies. 

It’s Malia who’s carved up the worst. The first one to leap in, all claws and muscled speed. The front line of the fight, and she’s stuck through the calf, hooked by the collarbone, speared through the gut before anyone else gets close enough to lay a blow. 

Theo had stayed close to the fight but away from the heart of it, sidling up to the action as distraction, decoy, though when it’s over no one misses how he comes away unscathed. 

Derek ends up with a hole in his shoulder deep enough that it almost lets light through. The poison eats away at the edges of their skin, almost idly before their healing steps up to combat it. It burrows and itches, but the priests are defeated. 

It should feel like a victory. The pack gathers in a straggled circle once the priests are de-limbed and buried back inside the dead tree. Mostly, no one speaks. 

Malia follows Derek home. The rest scatter. 

It’s late when Scott and Stiles return. 

Scott peels off his bloodstained and tattered shirt before collapsing exhausted onto his mattress, saying _it’ll heal._

Stiles hovers between the bed and the armchair like he has half a mind to stand over Scott while he sleeps. Scott sees the indecision through heavy lidded eyes and motions to the other half of the bed. 

“It’s fine,” Scott says, already sounding halfway under, and Stiles fidgets in his stance. “I’ll stay on this side,” Scott adds, then Stiles is shrugging off his outer layer and dropping lightly onto the other side of the mattress. 

“Just like old times,” Stiles mutters as he adjusts. 

A mosaic of shared beds from countless sleepovers demands a comparison to their position now, and the weight of so many changes isn’t lost on either of them. The distance between the past and where they are now stretches out like a canyon, the bottom not visible from the edge. 

“Do me a favour, Scott?” Stiles asks after a shared moment of silence.

“Mm. What,” Scott mumbles with a slack mouth.

“Don’t die in your sleep?” There’s a strained effort to it, a drop of humour that drowns out, doesn’t work at all, but Scott still snorts in response.

“M’okay. I’ll try my best.” 

—————————————————————————————————————————————

It’s just past four in the morning when Scott is awakened by the change in weight on the mattress. Stiles, hauling himself upright, stumbling off from his side of the bed, and the slip of darkness through the room is whispering with voices made of shadow. 

“Stiles?” Scott says. Through the dark his voice is crackling with a bleary rasp. “What’s wrong?”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” Stiles says back, an answer and not an answer, and Scott shifts to roll over. 

“Don’t - ” Stiles says next, desperately fast and Scott freezes in his pose - partially up and strung out along the line of bed. “Don’t move,” Stiles adds. “Just…” he trails off, sighs roughly and swears under his breath. In the time that takes, Scott has scented the air and pieced the situation together. 

The smell of urine is almost clinical, chemically sharp, and riffs of embarrassment and anxious dread are running circles around each other. 

“Shit, okay,” Scott says, still half asleep even as he rocks his legs forwards to find the floor and heave himself upright. “I’ll help.”

“Don’t,” Stiles says again, this time a defensive snap against the quiet weight of Scott’s eyes. They’re adjusted through the dark, and Stiles backs away from his line of vision, the fabric of his pants soaked through and clinging in the shadows. 

“You should be asleep and healing, not cleaning up after someone,” Stiles continues, and there’s a dark vein of sardonic deprecation in his tone. 

“It’s okay,” Scott says. There’s earnest insisting in his voice as he fully stands and reaches for the corner of the comforter. Stiles’ arm flashes out with a whip-fast reflex, catching Scott by the forearm then dropping it immediately. 

“Scott, can you please just - ” Stiles clamps down on his tongue next, breathing in something ragged. “Just sit down, and let me do it,” he finishes. It comes out all frustration with shame coiling around the harsh sound of it, and Scott drops himself into the chair beside his bed. 

“Alright, fine,” Scott says, cooperative and careful and Stiles drops back into a tremor of action. The sheets are stripped from the bed with a fluid action that can’t disguise itself as anything but practiced, then he’s breaking for the door, both his posture and the angle of his stance uncomfortable.

“Stiles - ” Scott says suddenly, a bolt of command in his tone that seems to shock both of them into stillness. “It _is_ fine,” he adds. It’s a little softer, and Stiles’ eyes don’t meet his in the dark. 

“Right, sure,” Stiles says. It’s clipped, chipping. “Just like old times.” 

The door rocks back against the hinges. The cells beneath the surface of Scott’s flesh continue fusing back together, and the shower runs cold and punishing. 

—————————————————————————————————————————————

The rooms of the house sit empty, the air inside them hollow, stuffed with oxygen as if waiting to ignite. Daylight is layered just underneath the quiet darkness of the outside world. The threat of lightness and stirring is poised and ready, and as Scott resigns to it the sound of the shower stream cuts off as abruptly as it had come on. 

The silence that follows leaves enough time to adjust to the shock of waking, and Scott spends it gathering his thoughts and a handful of clothes from his dresser. He’s moving stiffly but considerably more in tact than before, though it’s not enough to compete with the tide of agitation that’s infiltrated the room. 

Scott steadies himself on his feet to walk towards the bathroom door. He raps lightly on the frame and when it parts open he fists a change of clothes through the crack. 

Stiles comes out dressed in Scott’s clothes. It’s not enough to mask the other scents he’s wearing on his skin. They’re raw like fear, and they puncture. Shame and fatigue, bitter on the air. 

Stiles vanishes down the stairs then, alit with restless purpose and Scott watches it wondering how movement so tireless can seem so exhausting.

Scott trails after him without any real direction to his actions, finds him in the kitchen. 

Stiles is pulling open drawers and cabinet doors and shutting them with increasingly frustrated _snap_ s. 

“What are you looking for?” Scott finally asks, voice aimed at an almost timid frequency to combat the jagged frenzy of Stiles’ movements. There’s a small clatter, another cabinet is opened then closed, and Stiles answers with a rough shake of the box he’s holding - baking soda - before he’s swiftly moving back upstairs. 

Scott doesn’t follow him this time. Instead he stands in a strange and heavy haze left behind in the empty kitchen. 

When Stiles comes back downstairs he’s drenched with the bright scent of vinegar and stale humiliation. There’s a tightness to the hold of his mouth, a red tint to the skin around his eyes, and Scott doesn’t comment on any of it. 

“When did that start up again?” Scott asks instead. There’s a careful hush to his voice, like he’s unsure whether he should ask it even as he’s asking. There’s a hesitation, a gathering of thoughts and courage before Stiles is saying “a couple weeks ago.” It’s a lie and they both know it as it lands, but they both let it be. 

“I’m going to go,” Stiles says into the socket of the quiet room. Scott watches the way he’s looking at the door, eyes vacant and unwilling to recognize the shape of Scott in the room. The door leading outside seems to be staring Stiles down. Daring him to open it and break the seal, bark footsteps onto the silent pavement, turn over the engine that’s waiting in the drive. 

“You don’t have to.” Scott’s words come out delayed and Stiles’ face dips into a frown, disrupting the carefully held neutrality. He wavers, like something in the lowered pitch of Scott’s voice is biting at his resolve.

Scott’s careful about what he says next. There’s a jumpiness to Stiles these days, something that used to be the sharp whip of attention flying between things, the lurch from being lost in thought and startled back to the moment. It had evolved, devolved maybe, into this new gleaming sort of paranoia. Flinches, skittishness. 

“Stay,” Scott says and watches while Stiles stares down the door. There’s a hollowness entering his gaze, something rising up to swallow that shining gleam of panic and hurried action. Scott hates that it's something so familiar and so distancing.

There’s a waver, Stiles blinks and his posture is dropping back and for the moment Scott holds his breath waiting to see if it will propel him back towards that waiting door or launch him forwards, send him into Scott.

Stiles comes forward. 

Scott pulls him into an open hug with enough slack to escape from, closing his eyes when they connect, praying that Stiles doesn’t feel the need to escape from this. There’s a harsh clap to the centre of his back then, a Stiles standard, a guise of reassurance. In response Scott hooks his chin over the back of Stiles’ shoulder and pins it there, digging in and holding tight. 

Stiles burrows into the dark corner of Scott’s neck, and the closeness of his mouth, the press of their chests together, Scott can tell that Stiles is holding his breath too. It’s tense with anticipation, still ready to run. 

But then comes the feeling Scott’s waiting for - Stiles’ hands knotting into the meat of his back, his arms crushing in. 

They both exhale at the same time. Scott’s rushing out with a relieved and exhausted swoop. Stiles’ like he’s defeated, the sound strident. 

“Come on,” Scott is saying, his words mushed up in Stiles’ shoulder. “Let’s sleep on the couch.” He doesn’t let go of Stiles while he says it, still afraid that he’s going to pull away, remove himself entirely.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, more of that fight going out of him, and Scott is grateful and relieved; he hates it. It’s fight he’s going to need for so much to come, and it doesn’t belong in the spaces between them. Scott hates those spaces too. Stiles sniffs then, detaches himself from Scott’s arms.

“I’m just gonna,” he makes a choppy and aborted gesture, a thumb hooking back upstairs. “Laundry.” 

Scott tails him back upstairs, wandering into his mother’s empty bedroom to lift the hamper there off the floor. He’s helpless to stand against the need to do something. To stay busy, to stitch solutions into the torn fabric of nightmares and shadows that don’t lift in the light. 

Stiles doesn’t jump when Scott appears in the laundry room behind him, and Scott’s able to justify following him with the wicker basket in his hands. It just seems wasteful, to run the washer at quarter capacity.

The early hour and the blade get the better of Scott’s balance for a step, and he rights himself with a slight teeter. Stiles intercepts him there, gently pries the basket out of Scott’s hands saying _“lay down before you fall down.”_

They fit themselves onto the living room couch together, crooked and fatigued. 

“Still hurts?” Stiles asks, the sort of question that only entertains one possible answer. Scott doesn’t deflect it this time, just nods and the gesture conjures up a ripple of static from the back of the couch. 

“Wish I could help with it,” Stiles says then. There’s a soft rustle of movement, and Scott can feel the tentative brush of Stiles’ fingers against the front of his shirt, outlining the wound. Scott doesn’t mean to flinch, but it happens and Stiles yanks his hand away like he’s been burnt. He has, Scott supposes. They both have. 

It keeps burning between them now, unsaid and leering, demanding they remember the last time Scott had a stab wound in his stomach and Stiles’ hands on him. 

It’s finally drowned out by the sound of the washing machine chugging into its next cycle. Some things wash away easily, and some things stain.


End file.
